Treasury, having driven U.S. diesel to a record high, orders Europe's price down immediately instead.

The Punk Won't need a second posting. I'll have a window out before you've found your rhyme.

Begin on 4 September, when American diesel reached $5.85 a gallon, the highest the pump had shown, and an economist named Dean Baker posted online that "Trump did it," only half joking.

The Hippie Fretting, is it. This house has fretted since the boiler went, and called it something else.

The Fixer Something else. The boiler could use a sponsor, if the Hippie stopped meditating near the stopcock.

It kept climbing. By 11 September it stood at $6.06, fourteen percent above the month before and sixty-four percent above the year before that, the highest the American Automobile Association had recorded, the war with Iran still unresolved. Patrick De Haan, who tracks the pump for a living, said only that it "is not slowing down."

The Punk Sponsored, is it. Sponsorship won't stop it climbing; a door might, and I'm removing one.

By 29 September, Texas and Georgia had stopped waiting on Washington and announced their own emergency measures, while the White House, the Washington Examiner noted, was still only weighing measures of its own.

The Hippie Weighing, is it. This house has weighed the rota for a year, and it's still on the fridge.

Then on Thursday, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, posted that "our European partners should accelerate delivery on their existing commitments and make additional supplies immediately available to address ongoing disruptions." Le Monde printed it as Washington telling Europe to act "immediately" to lower diesel prices; at home the same post reads only as a suggestion. Only the verb moves.

You will be looking for the part where Washington turns the same instruction on itself and lowers its own price. There is no such part; the instruction only goes out, never in. Take the post by both ends: a government that set its own record now tells somebody else's market to bring theirs down, with no date for its own.

The Fixer Immediately, is it. The rota could be sponsored immediately too, provided whoever's asking pays the same day.

This serves the price Americans already paid in full, handed to Europe as an instruction rather than an example. Europe pays in diesel it must now find elsewhere; Washington's own bill went out in September, and nothing further is due from it.

The Poet Paid in full. I'll put that in the verse, right after asking someone else to tidy what's already spent.